


feeling like a villain, got a hunger inside

by dulceit



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen, Swearing, Violence, mentions of torture, monster mv!au, ot9 @ the moment but will probably change later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8609761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulceit/pseuds/dulceit
Summary: Some might say Kim Junmyeon's little clique in the resistance had this long coming—they're among the best of the best in the city's underbelly, after all—and others might disagree.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from lj (@solaceii)
> 
> is monster!au relevant any more lmao. ft some other smtown artists.

It’s Chanyeol who tells them, bursting into base with his voice edging into a high panicky tone they’ve never heard him use before. “It's—” he gasps out, “Baek—”

Everyone’s alert in half a second, instantly jolting to their feet (a life where shadows are always lurking at the corners of your eyes will ingrain that kind of habit in you). Junmyeon recovers first.

“What’s wrong?” he demands, waving the rest of them down and approaching Chanyeol carefully.

Chanyeol doesn’t reply for a moment, doubled over with his hands braced against his knees as he struggles to catch his breath. It’s clear he’s sprinted all the way back to base—and with injuries, too, if the blood dripping off his chin is his own. In the corner, Yixing silently slips away to find some bandages and antiseptic.

“We were,” Chanyeol wheezes at the ground, “me and Baek—”

“Calm down,” Junmyeon says, using the slow lowered tone he rarely has need for anymore. “Hey, _hey_ —” Chanyeol looks up, “—take a deep breath. Okay? _What’s wrong._ "

“They’ve taken Baekhyun," Chanyeol whispers, vowels breaking, and everything goes very quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

Seoul’s underground resistance is the biggest in the nation; no one’s sure how many strong they are exactly, since they have people working undercover and overcover and scattered all around different bases, but its network is by far the most advanced of the main cities.

But being high-profile comes with its costs, and one of those is a government-placed target on the back (and for some, a bullet through the heart). So some might say Kim Junmyeon’s little clique in the Resistance had this long coming—they’re among the best of the best in the city's underbelly, after all—and others might disagree.

Chanyeol is of the latter.

He explains it to them a few minutes later, while Yixing is winding gauze around the crown of his head, in slow halting sentences that get broken by stretches of silence.

"Baekhyun and I, we were…we were scouting out the M District, you know? Like you told us to,” he says to Junmyeon. Yixing gestures for him to hold some of his vivid red hair out of the way and he does so absently, waiting for Yixing to staple the gauze closed before dropping his cut-littered hand. “It was going fine—Baek’s always been good at stealth missions.”

Junmyeon waits patiently for him to continue. Yixing steps away in the pause and turns to go put away the med-kit, pausing at Junmyeon’s ear before he leaves to murmur a quiet “be gentle, leader-ssi” and pat him once on the shoulder. The only other person left in the room is Jongin, nursing a split lip and scabbing cuts of his own. Sehun’s in his bunker sleeping off similar injuries after running the same raiding operation with Jongin.

Chanyeol snorts suddenly. “Me, on the other hand—clumsy fuck. We all _know_ that. If anyone should have been captured, it would be me. But of course it was _Baekhyun_ —"

“It wasn’t your fault,” Junmyeon interrupts gently. Chanyeol shakes his head, glaring down at the floor.

“I could’ve stopped it,” he says. He’s gotten over his panic and now it’s clearly manifesting into the post-adrenaline restlessness. Jongin looks agitated too, foot tapping against the ground impatiently as he listens.

“The point of two-point missions is that you protect each other,” Chanyeol says, mouth twisting down. “I was—I was _with him_ , and they still managed to capture him. I just…”

He trails off again, gaze locked on some point on the low-lit concrete. Junmyeon waits a few more moments before he sighs, tension bleeding out of his shoulders, and pushes away from the wall. “It’s midnight, the city’s locked down. Bypassing security at this hour will be impossible. We—” he pauses, like it pains him to say it, “—we can’t help Baekhyun right now. As soon as it’s light, though—I promise we will.”

Chanyeol doesn’t respond. Junmyeon exhales. “Get some rest. Let’s leave him alone, Jongin-ah.” He moves to exit the room and Jongin rises to his feet to trail after him.

Yixing is waiting in the small haphazard kitchen they’ve fitted into the base, pacing back and forth slowly. "How is he?"

“Pretty shellshocked,” Junmyeon says. He runs a hand through his ashy hair and sits down at the table. “He and Baekhyun have been inseparable since day one; he’s really beating himself up over this.”

Jongin drops into the chair beside him. “They….fuck, hyung, they _torture_ Resistance members that they capture,” he says, visibly distressed. “The longer we wait—” and Junmyeon gives him a smile of tired, bitter agreement.

“I know, Jongin-ah.”

“But,” Yixing interjects, before Jongin can do something stupid like leave and try to save Baekhyun himself, “it’s bizarre, to say the least, that Chanyeol and Baekhyun were ambushed. They were scouting out an abandoned area. There should’ve only been routine drones circling a place like that, and that’s nothing they can’t handle.”

Junmyeon frowns down at the table pensively. “If a drone really was able to corner him, Baekhyun should’ve been able to take care of it, too. And if not him, then Chanyeol.” He shakes his head, voice taking on a harder edge. “It doesn't matter, we won’t get anywhere speculating. Baekhyun’s tough—god, do we know it—but getting him back is more important for now.”

Jongin shifts, antsy, and leans forward. “When?”

“In the morning. Four hours. If they have Baekhyun they’ll be holding him in Penitentiary 9, so we’ll go in when the soldiers switch shifts at five o’clock.”

“They’ll be expecting us,” Yixing warns.

“Doesn’t matter,” Junmyeon says. “They’ll always be expecting us.”

“Do you have a _plan_?”

“I’ll make one.”

Silence sinks in for a few moments. Junmyeon closes his eyes, eyebrows creasing wearily. “Don’t worry about it. You two should get some rest, I’ll take care of this.”

Eventually, Jongin stands with a mumble of “I’ll wake Sehunnie up when we need to leave” and troops out of the kitchen. Yixing stays long enough to help Junmyeon unroll the maps and building plans they have stored beneath the table, smuggled in from their undercover connections, and throw around a few preliminary ideas.

He leaves for his bunker only after advising him to at least catch a nap before the morning (“adrenaline will only take you so far, alright?”), and then Junmyeon is alone. His group may be a force to reckoned with, but without Baekhyun, their headcount is down to only five.

Junmyeon scrubs a hand over his face. The base feels quieter without Baekhyun. Colder, too.

Fuck.

He needs to make a plan for the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

Kyungsoo rubs at his eye with the heel of his palm, attempting to blink moisture back into it. He’s on night shift in the control room, has been for four hours now, and his eyes have been combing and scanning the multiple security feeds for so long that they feel dryer than a sheet of paper. He supposes he should be used to this—running the CCTV control room has been his assigned occupation ever since he hit the right age, but Kyungsoo’s never quite fit into the system the way everyone expects him to.

The door behind him opens and he straightens up quickly. It’s one of his higher-ups, tight-lipped and severe; he surveys the room once, waiting for Kyungsoo to stand and dip into a formal bow, before sweeping out again. Kyungsoo makes sure to wait for the automatic door to _shnick_ shut before sinking back down again.

He inhales deeply, feeling the stale air fill and then flatten his lungs, and sets about reorganizing his desk for the third time in his shift. It’s only after he’s straightened the last thing on the small surface—his ID badge, flat and shiny with his name stamped into the bottom in metallic letters, now aligned squarely with the edge of the table—that something catches his eye on the bottom left monitor.

The camera feed that’s displaying on it is in the main hallway of Penitentiary 9. The prison’s only a few streets over from the surveillance center but Kyungsoo’s never gone near it; citizens not assigned to the premises are forbidden from entering under strict threat of arrest, and what exactly occurs there has never been released to the public, anyway.

(Kyungsoo knows, though. Kyungsoo knows everything. It’s hard not to, when you’re put in charge of monitoring the city’s very eyes.

Sometimes, that’s not a good thing.)

A group of soldiers, the visors of their helmets pulled low, are marching a person down the hallway at a harried pace. Kyungsoo zooms in on the small figure they’re tugging along with a few quick strokes of his keyboard and squints at the pixels, attempting to catch some semblance of a face, but the Resistance prisoner is thrashing so violently that it proves impossible until he happens to toss his head back and, for one second, his features get thrown into sharp relief in the light.

He’s…young. Not younger than Kyungsoo, but less than a year older at most. Dark hair and darker eyes, lips that slope down gently at the corners. Kyungsoo catches the silver glimmer of an elaborate ear ornament, too, before the prisoner’s head is forced down and the group exits the other side of the frame.

The door swishes open again and Kyungsoo hastily sits back. This time, it’s one of the younger employees, fresh to the CCTV center after becoming old enough to get assigned. She’s come to relieve him for his thirty-minute break.

Bones cracking, he stands and grabs his ID, looping the lanyard over his head before shuffling towards the door. (He offers a small smile to the girl while he passes, but all he gets in return is a flat glance.)

Usually he’ll pace around and stretch his legs a bit during the break, let them move before he has remain stationary again for another four hours, but today he settles down in the lobby and opens his phone instead. The Resistance prisoner has made him incredibly curious. And more so than he should be—anything he does to investigate will cross into legally ambiguous areas.

It’s with a feeling of guilt that he opens the public news feed on his browser.

Entering _underground resistance_ into the search bar doesn’t earn him anything. Not surprising; all information's likely been locked away from the public. He hesitates again, then navigates to the settings and inputs his ID number into the login.

_DO KYUNGSOO, SURVEILLANCE_ flashes on the screen, followed by _ACCESS LEVEL: 4_. He goes back to the search and tries again. This time, a short page of results pulls up, all of them filed under high security and flagged orange for private use. He scrolls through them briefly—they’re all vague and blasé reports of missing individuals, only brief mentions of a ‘possible underground resistance’ sprinkled throughout the text.

“Do-ssi.”

He jumps. It’s—his stomach lurches with dread—Choi Minho, the CCTV head and the very last person Kyungsoo ever wants to cross.

He scrambles to his feet and flattens into a deep bow. The top of Choi Minho’s polished black shoes look like camera lenses, menacing and shiny and always watching.

“Rise. What are you doing, Do-ssi?”

Kyungsoo keeps his voice as even as possible. “Checking the news, sajangnim.”

“Why?” Minho asks. He doesn’t sound angry, just deliberate, thoughtful. His eyes flicker down to Kyungsoo’s phone and Kyungsoo tries to shield it with his hand surreptitiously, not sure if Minho’s been standing there long enough to read over his shoulder.

“I…” His mind races for an answer while his heart thuds unhelpfully. “I thought knowing what was happening in our city might help me do my job more efficiently, sajangnim. Allow me to better understand what I’m monitoring.” (It’s partly the truth.)

Minho doesn’t reply for a moment, scanning his face like he’s looking for something. Kyungsoo presses his tongue against the back of his teeth and waits. Finally, Minho smiles—a gesture so out of place that Kyungsoo has to keep himself from openly gaping—and says, “I see. Have a pleasant night, Do-ssi.”

Kyungsoo watches his back retreat with a heavy sense of trepidation, and swears to himself to never step out of line again.

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning comes cold and foggy: perfect weather for a break in.

Chanyeol is the first to emerge from the bunker, eyes bloodshot and face gaunt but looking alert nevertheless. Jongin and Sehun trip into the kitchen a few minutes later, both chomping at the bit and raring to go, and Sehun drops a quick “Jongin told me what happened, hyung, fuck,” to Junmyeon.

Junmyeon waits for them to gulp down a hasty breakfast before briefing them on the plan. “Shifts at the penitentiary will change in one hour. We’re lucky—the fog will cover our tracks—so getting in and out won't be an issue if we time it right.”

“Still cameras inside the prison, though,” Jongin points out, worrying his lip between his teeth.

“Yixing will take care of that.”

“Where is Yixing-hyung, by the way?” Sehun asks. He has a large scabbing cut running along one cheekbone, mirrored by one against Jongin’s hairline, and Junmyeon allows himself a moment of guilt—he’s the one letting these kids get injured—before answering.

“Yixing’s in the truck working on hacking into the CCTV servers. As soon as we’re finished here we’ll go out to meet him.”

For the first time that day, Chanyeol speaks. “What about the _guards_ in the penitentiary?” His voice is hoarse and drags over the words roughly.

A smile, razor-edged and indulgent, slants up the corners of Junmyeon’s mouth. “You’re free to deal with them how ever you want.”

 

 

 

 

 

Minseok faces away from the cell bars most of the time. The side he would have to roll onto to look out towards the bars is the side they drove the electro-rod into when they arrested him, and putting any pressure onto that area still hurts three days later.

The only time he’s propped himself up to look outside was yesterday, when a group of soldiers tried to drag a…a Resistance member, Minseok supposes, seeing as this is Penitentiary 9, into the cell next to him. _Tried_ , because the prisoner managed to buck free of one soldier’s grasp and smash a vicious kick into another soldier’s jaw (Minseok remembers the loud _crack_ of his heel connecting with the soldier’s mandible) before someone finally managed to drive one of the sedating syringes into his neck.

(Minseok makes a point of not looking when they take the Resistance member to the interrogation room later that night, makes a point of not looking when they drag him back, his breath rattling wetly in his chest, head listing to the side.)

A voice suddenly comes from the cell to his left. “Hey.”

Speak of the devil.

Minseok doesn’t reply. Interacting with a prisoner—never mind a Resistance prisoner from Penitentiary 9—is a severe breach of the laws, and goes against every fiber of training he’s ever had drilled into him.

A beat later, he thinks, what the fuck, he’s already broken the law. (He usually has far better impulse control, but something about recent events seems to have weakened it a little.)

He clears his dry throat, waits.

“You’re not Resistance, yeah?”

Minseok hesitates. “No.”

“How’d you get here?”

He’s just thinking of how to answer—filtering events through his mind, deciding whether to say all of it or none of it—when he stiffens, suddenly remembering: the route the prison guards take should mean they’ve almost finished circling the next block over. They’ll be at this block any minute.

Something compels him to hiss a warning of “the guards—” before, right on cue, the two soldiers on duty round the corner.

Minseok goes still, eyes trained on the far wall of the cell. Each footfall of the guards sounds deafening in the silence, every step ringing like an alarm bell on the dull concrete as they come closer. (He wonders when he started being afraid of authority—when he started thinking like a criminal.) Their steps pass Minseok’s cell after what feels like an eternity and then pause by the Resistance prisoner’s.

“Heard this was the one that broke Heechul’s jaw,” one voice mutters, and the other snorts disbelievingly.

“Don’t make shit up. Heechul’s got, what, three inches on him?”

“Really,” the first guard insists, low and under his breath like he’s scared of provoking the prisoner. Minseok assumes he's feigning sleep. “Guys said it was cell number four. Pretty boy with black hair and a chain earring. ’S gotta be him.”

“I don’t see any earring.”

“Must be on the other side, then.”

There’s the familiar sound of the scratchy soldier uniform rustling as the second guard moves; Minseok’s worn that uniform since the moment he reached the assignment age, and hearing it makes an odd feeling rise in his chest. “Fine, lemme poke him awake—”

“Wait—”

A loud snap echoes through the hall, followed by a harsh “ _motherfuck!”_

Minseok hears a flurry of angry shouts, mixed with sounds of pain, and then the sound of the boots scrambling to get away. Silence follows.

“Break his fingers?” he ventures into the quiet.

He can practically hear the smile in the other’s voice. “Yep.”

“You’re awful chipper.”

“Feels good to resist.”

“They’ll punish you for that.”

A laugh, bright and jarring. “They’ll punish me for _breathing_. Might as well pretend that it’s for something else.”

Minseok wonders how old the Resistance member is. He finds himself, irrationally, wanting to talk to him face to face.

“What…” He pauses, unsure of what he’s about to ask. After a second he opens his mouth again, and what comes out is, “What’s your name?”

The answer comes back with a surprised lilt. “Baekhyun.”

A long pause follows, before his cell neighbor— _Baekhyun_ —sighs, sounding amused. “And you?”

“Oh,” he says, a little awkward. “Minseok.”

“Minseok,” Baekhyun repeats. His voice is doing that smiley thing again. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Minseok says. He clears his throat. “Yeah. You too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u can talk to me @ my [ask.fm](http://ask.fm/dulciet) if u want to !! (i've never used it for anything lmfao)


	2. Chapter 2

He’s just snapping the second guard’s neck—a quick violent twist, easy as breathing—when Yixing’s voice breaks over the comms.

“Shit—”

Junmyeon drops the soldier to the ground and cups a hand around his ear. “What’s wrong?”

In his peripheral, the bright red of Chanyeol shoots two guards cleanly through the temple. “Fuck, I—” Yixing says, sounding distracted, “they’ve, I don’t know, installed some kind of new system—it was fine at first but now it’s blocking me out—”

“Can you get back in?”

“I’m _trying_ —”

Junmyeon signals everyone to move and they hurry onwards, Sehun swiping the ID badge off a slumped soldier’s body before following.

“Status, Yixing,” Junmyeon prompts, a little more urgently, as he ducks around a corner. The entrance to the cell blocks should be close.

“Hang on—” Then, a staticky, frustrated exhale and the brush of fabric over the speaker. “I’m locked out. The security feed’s live for anyone to see now.”

There’s the door. Sehun tosses the ID to Junmyeon and Chanyeol boots it open as soon as the card swipes cleanly through the scanner. Light spills into the dark row of cells and illuminates—

“Baekhyun!”

Chanyeol is there first, long arms pushing between the grilles to meet Baekhyun’s outstretching hands. “Yeol, oh my god—”

“We have to get out of here,” Junmyeon says, eyes darting to the small round cameras on the ceiling as he passes the ID to Chanyeol. “Yixing’s been locked out of the servers. We’re under full surveillance now.”

Sehun sucks in a breath. “They’ll pull the alarm any minute—”

“Hang on, this is an electromechanical lock,” Chanyeol interrupts sharply. He twist around, gaze already flitting around the room. “It needs a key, not—”

“The guard with the white hair has key number four.”

Everyone stills.

Baekhyun is the first to move, pressing closer to the bars like it’ll help him see into the cell next to his. “You _know_ the key rotations?”

Junmyeon raises his eyebrows and glances at whoever Baekhyun is addressing. The man in the cell to the right of Baekhyun’s looks back evenly, brown eyes clear.

They don’t have much time. “Hyung, should I—” Jongin starts, and Junmyeon only hesitates for a second.

“Go,” he says, and Jongin bolts back towards the hallway to find the body of the guard.

“Wait!” Jongin stutters to a halt just before the doorway. Baekhyun turns to cell next to his again. “What guard carries your key?”

Junmyeon can see the surprise break across the prisoner’s face. “Wh—that’s not impor—”

“It _is_ important.”

“I...the guard with the face mask.”

Baekhyun looks to Junmyeon. He has that insistent glint in his eyes that only Baekhyun gets, the one that appears when he’s dead-set on doing (or selling) something. Junmyeon sighs. “Fine. Jongin, Sehun, you find a key each. Make it quick.”

As soon as their youngest two disappear down the hallway, Junmyeon turns away towards the wall to speak into the comms. “It’s been—what—five, ten minutes already, Yixing,” he says quietly. “Why hasn’t anybody in the surveillance center pulled the alarm.”

Yixing blows out a long breath. “I don’t—I don’t know. Maybe the system’s still shorting out, or the person monitoring fell asleep, or something. I don’t know.” He sounds just as bewildered as Junmyeon feels.

“I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

Junmyeon turns back to the cells. Chanyeol and Baekhyun are speaking to each other in undertones, fingers still linked through the bars, and he lets them be. He’s considering the man in cell five when Jongin and Sehun skid back into the cell block with keys in hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” Junmyeon says, and with a final glance at the cameras they set to work.

 

 

 

 

 

Kyungsoo doesn’t know why he does it.

He’s there when the security feeds—showing nothing but peaceful, empty hallways—abruptly crackle and fizz out. He’s there when they come back up again and suddenly there are people on the screens, breaking into the Penitentiary, snapping the necks of the guards in the hallways and going against everything that the system—that _Kyungsoo_ —is (meant) to stand for.

He’s there when he realizes that the people are trying to free the Resistance member, and he’s there when he also realizes this means he’s supposed to pull the alarm.

He punches his ID number into the control panel and the plastic case over the alarm pops open, yawning back with a squeak of its hinges. He reaches towards the red lever and notices, suddenly, that his hands are shaking.

He’s there when he realizes, with sharp, startling clarity, that he can’t do this.

 

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun looks….strangely okay. He looks okay in the way that someone who isn’t actually alright looks.

They aren’t insensitive enough to ask him about it, at least not now, but Yixing, as he cleans the dried blood off Baekhyun’s bruised face, does question—with a gentleness only Yixing can summon—if he’s alright. They all pretend not to pay attention as Baekhyun smiles at him tiredly and tells him not to worry about it.

But nevertheless, they’ve piled onto the few ratty couches they have in the base, and they’re feeling tired and strung-out but things are feeling strangely okay. Baekhyun seems strangely okay. The prisoner they picked up seems strangely okay. The lights strung up along the ceiling pool them all in a warm glow, and things seem….okay.

Junmyeon is the first to break it. (He has to. He knows and hates it that has to.)

He turns to the prisoner who was in cell number five, and says, tone deliberately light, “Your name is….Minseok, right?”

Minseok nods. He’s standing stiffly by the arm of one couches, clearly unsure of what to do with himself and still dressed in prisoner garb that Baekhyun’s short holding was able to forego.

“You’re not with the Resistance.” It’s more of a statement than a question.

“No.”

“Then I have to thank you for helping us any way,” Junmyeon says honestly. “Memorizing the key rotations can’t have been easy.”

“He knew the guard schedule, too,” Baekhyun adds, voice raspy. He settles back against the couch onto Chanyeol’s arm and ignores the half-hearted grumble. “When we talked before you came.”

Jongin looks impressed. “How long did it take you to memorize all that?"

Minseok shifts, a visible tightness starting to coil up at his shoulders. “I was, ah, only at the penitentiary for a few days before Baekhyun was brought in—”

“Only a few days?” Sehun gapes. “How did you even—”

It’s Yixing who cuts in with a laugh. “Alright, let’s not overwhelm Minseok-ssi.” He turns to address Minseok. “We should have some spare clothes here that you can change into. Would that be okay with you?”

Minseok looks surprised. Junmyeon thinks he must be unused to this kind of treatment, whatever it is. “Thank you, that—that would be nice.” A beat of hesitation, then, “And just Minseok is fine. If that’s alright.”

“Of course,” Yixing says, dimple poking into one cheek. “You don't need to speak to us formally either. I’m Zhang Yixing.”

Introductions circulate and end with Junmyeon recommending everyone to rest up. It’s still late afternoon, but after the adrenaline of the morning has worn off everyone’s a little sluggish. The persistent muffled grey of the fog blanket doesn’t help, either.

Yixing offers to bind the obvious electro-rod burn in Minseok’s side before they turn in, and he’s accepted with the same cautious gratitude their newest addition has been exhibiting since they brought him along.

Lights go out at six o’clock.

 

 

 

 

 

The morning after, Junmyeon goes to kitchen and finds Yixing waiting at the table with a two mugs of coffee. He accepts one with raised eyebrow and sits down across from him.

“Chanyeol hasn’t been the same,” Yixing says without preamble. Junmyeon blinks.

“Ever since Baekhyun was captured, he’s been very—very reclusive,” Yixing continues. He frowns down at his mug, then back at Junmyeon. “It made sense for the night after. Like you said, they’re usually attached at the hip. But considering we managed to break Baekhyun out just five or six hours later and that he’s here with us now, Chanyeol’s behavior just doesn’t….make sense. He’s barely spoken a word.”

Junmyeon takes a sip of his coffee. (Bitter. It’s hard to get good coffee—good anything—when you’re operating against the law.) “I’ve noticed, I think, but I just assumed he was getting over the scare,” he says slowly. "We’ve been lucky enough to never need to break anyone out of government hands before.”

Yixing taps his fingers against the side of the mug doubtfully, nails clinking on the ceramic. “Maybe.” His tone suggests he thinks otherwise.

“Hey—if you think so, then I believe you,” Junmyeon says, sincere. Yixing has always been better at things involving the metaphysical, even just subtle changes in behavior. “If it helps, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

The furrow between Yixing’s brows smooths out. “That’s all I ask,” he says, and the subject is dropped.

The watery morning light let in by the skylights softens everything into a gentle blue shade. Junmyeon watches steam curl up from the mouth of his cup and realizes that it’s been a while since he was last able to have a quiet morning, unbroken by the clutching feeling of danger or noisy maknaes clamoring for attention.

He takes another sip and can’t keep his nose from wrinkling. “Are we out of sugar?”

“Unfortunately,” Yixing says. His lips twitch. “Sorry. I know Taeyeon-noona and her group are camped out in the base a few streets down; I can go later to see if they have any.”

Junmyeon hums thoughtfully. “We could all go, actually. Jongin and Sehun both need haircuts and it would be good to catch up with her group, see if they have any news about the other cities.”

Sehun chooses that moment to burst into the kitchen, a sleepy Jongin in tow, and whine about his too-long hair. Yixing snorts and shakes his head.

 

 

 

 

 

He needs to get out of here.

He doesn’t belong with these people, these Resistance members who are horribly kind and not at all what they were supposed to be. He doesn't belong with their ideals and their familiarity and their—their _crimes_ , he reminds himself, their _violence_ and transactions against the law. They are everything that Minseok has been drilled to oppose.

He has to get out of here.

The Resistance members talk about visiting another base and Minseok politely refuses on the basis of tiredness and not wanting to intrude. Junmyeon frowns but allows it. A soon as they’re gone Minseok shoves an extra change of clothes into a bag and starts preparing to leave.

“Minseok-hyung?”

His heart drops into his stomach. Baekhyun stands in the doorway of the room, a thin hand braced on the frame and expression frozen halfway between a surprise and confusion.

“What are you doing?”

 _Oh_ , he thinks. _Baekhyun_. Baekhyun is a lot like how Minseok imagined him when they were speaking to each other a wall apart, only imagination and a voice to go off of in making a mental image: black hair and clear eyes, a persistently tactile nature that’s somehow clung onto Minseok after barely a day.

“Hyung?”

When did Baekhyun start calling him hyung? Minseok finds that he doesn’t mind, for some reason, and that in itself rattles him. He forces words to leave his mouth. “I—um, I was—”

Baekhyun’s eyes drop down to the bag he’s still clutching loosely. “Are you—where are you going?”

“I’m—” He has no idea what to say. Where _is_ he going?

“Do you….not want to be here?” Baekhyun chances, and Minseok’s brain stammers. “I know I didn’t give you much—much choice, when we were at the penitentiary, but I just assumed—”

“I don’t belong here,” he blurts.

Baekhyun blinks. He looks taken off guard, before his face shutters in confusion. “Then where do you belong?”

He won’t be accepted back into the ranks, not after he’s been thrown in prison, Minseok suddenly realizes, but he pushes that thought aside as soon as it comes. He’ll figure something out. “Not here. Anywhere but here.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter, I just—I need to leave, you don’t want me here—”

“I do—we _all_ do,” Baekhyun insists. “That should’ve been clear from the moment we took you with us—”

“No, you don’t—”

_“Why?”_

“It’s not impo—”

“It is important.”

It’s that: a repeat of their exchange in the penitentiary, a repeat of Baekhyun’s steadfast insistence that Minseok is important, that makes him stop.

Baekhyun watches him, waiting, and Minseok looks away, at the ground, noticing for the first time that he’s still wearing the clothes they let him borrow, still standing there only on their hospitality.

Fuck. He caves.

He swallows, clears his throat. “I’m a soldier,” he says hoarsely. He can’t look Baekhyun in the eye. “I’m just like the guards at Penitentiary 9, or the ones who patrol the city, or the soldiers that go to your Resistance riots and—” Baekhyun makes a breathy sound like he’s about to say something, but Minseok bulldozes on, “—and open fire on the crowd, Baekhyun, and _kill_ people—people like you. Baekhyun, I could have _killed you_ if we met before we did. I could have killed Junmyeon, or Yixing—”

“Hyung—”

“I don’t belong here—you’ve all been so _kind_ and it’s not meant to be this way—”

“Hyung.”

Baekhyun takes a step forward. It’s the first time he’s moved during the entire exchange, and Minseok falls silent without fully knowing why. Baekhyun takes another pace forward and then stops.

He seems to take a moment to consider something. “If that’s the case,” he finally says cautiously, voice tentative, “if that’s what you think, then why did you help me?”

Minseok gapes at him. He should be—why is he even _talking_ to Minseok anymore? He should be throwing him out, or at least alerting someone of the fact that who they saved was a government employed soldier—

Almost as if reading his mind, Baekhyun’s face softens. “We were all part of the system once,” he murmurs. “Being assigned to enforcement wasn’t in your control.”

“I could have been one of the guards that took you to the interrogation room and tortured you,” Minseok tries at length.

“But you weren’t,” Baekhyun says, taking another step forward. “You helped me instead, and—” he pauses, expression shifting suddenly in puzzlement, “—hang on, why were you in Penitentiary 9 in the first place?”

It takes Minseok a second to process. He’s had so little brain space and time to think since he was swept along with Baekhyun that his arrest has been pushed to the very back of his mind. He attempts to scrape his thoughts together. “We caught a Resistance woman who was working undercover in communications,” he finally manages. “I—I let her go, because—I don’t know, she just didn’t look like she deserved….whatever they would sentence her to. They found out that I’d done it and arrested me. I guess they chose the penitentiary to make a statement.”

He stops, because now Baekhyun’s gaping at _him_. “You—" Baekhyun sputters, and when Minseok looks nonplussed he seems even more baffled. “You—you help a Resistance girl escape, you help me escape, you feel so fucking guilty about the notion of hurting us, and you’re still trying to leave?”

“What—”

“You’re still have a crisis about how we’ve been too nice when you’ve done all that?”

Minseok flounders. This isn’t how he imagined this conversation would play out. He searches desperately for a response, anything, but comes up empty.

Baekhyun seems satisfied with his response, though. He smiles (boxy and rectangular and involving dark eyes curving into dark half-crescents, better than the one that comes across in his voice) and says, “I think you’re not being very honest with yourself. You’ve got a big dumb heart, hyung.”

Minseok still can’t find words. Baekhyun moves forward again and is finally in his space. He places his hands on Minseok’s, which he suddenly realizes are still clutched white-knuckled around the bag, and pushes them down gently, slim fingers dipping underneath his to loosen his grasp. The bag slips out of Minseok’s hands.

“Okay,” Baekhyun says. He steps back. “Now, let me ask this officially: are you okay with being here? If you really, really, _still_ don’t think you belong here, then you can leave. But if not, I think Junmyeon-hyung will let you stay.” He grins again. “He’s nice like that.”

“I can’t believe you,” Minseok croaks finally.

Baekhyun laughs.

 

 

 

 

 

When Baekhyun doesn’t come back from his self-proclaimed “Minseok check-up”, Junmyeon isn’t immediately concerned. He does, however, send a raised eyebrow across the room at Yixing, who frowns in acknowledgement, and receive a worried look from Chanyeol.

He returns his attention to the conversation he’s having with Taeyeon, but she’s paused, noticing his brief second of distraction. It only takes her a moment to realize what's up.

“Baekhyun-ah’s not back,” she murmurs. She straightens and gestures for Hyoyeon and Yuri to watch the doors, quick eyes assessing all entrances.

Junmyeon is surprised. “I’m sure—”

Taeyeon shakes her head, running a hand through her pale hair. “Just a few weeks ago they managed to catch Tiffany—we’ve had her stationed undercover in communications for years and years; you remember.” Junmyeon nods. “They’re cracking down on us harder than ever. Something’s happening. We have to be careful, Junmyeon.”

Taeyeon has years of experience under her belt that Junmyeon doesn’t have. He personally holds her in a lot of respect, too—for her tiny stature, she embodies incredible strength and defiance—so if she’s sensing a change in the tides, then he’ll trust her judgement. Something catches his attention, though: “Tiffany was caught? How did she manage to get out?”

Taeyeon follows his puzzled gaze to the girl in question, laughing with Yoona and looking none the worse for wear. “We were lucky with that, like you,” Taeyeon admits. “The commanding officer who took her in when they got tipped off let her go, for some reason.” She purses her lips, thoughtful. “I guess some people are sympathizers. I wouldn’t take it for granted.”

It’s been a few minutes. Chanyeol looks increasingly antsy, and even Jongin and Sehun are glancing around. Yixing shoots Junmyeon a look that can only be read as _we should leave_ , which Taeyeon catches.

She smiles, the grim cut of her eyes softening to curves. “You should go,” she prompts gently. “Baekhyunnie can take care of himself, but who knows what trouble he might get himself into when he’s alone.”

“That’s true,” Junmyeon snorts, standing. A quick wave of his hand rounds everyone up. “It was good seeing you, noona,” he says to Taeyeon, and she rises too, pulling his taller frame down for a quick hug. Her hair smells like shampoo. “Stay safe.”

“Let us know if you need anything,” she says.

Goodbyes are exchanged, and before long they’ve entered the cool air of the tunnels. Junmyeon keeps an eye on Chanyeol—after Yixing’s musings in the morning, he feels high wired to noticing Chanyeol’s behavior—and finds that he is, indeed, silent and twitchy, usual easy grin nowhere to be found. Junmyeon files the observation away for later.

The heavy locks of the entrance whirr and clunk tiredly before finally giving way. They enter and find Baekhyun and Minseok in the main room, arguing quietly in insistent but muted tones. Both jump and spin to the face them.

Junmyeon looks between them with raised brow. “Something you want to discuss?”

Baekhyun nudges Minseok forward subtly. “Yeah.”

Minseok swallows and opens his mouth.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jongdaebak will be showing up soon, probs ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
>  
> 
> [ask.fm](http://ask.fm/dulciet)


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